South Australian MSP Calvert Technologies has completed a project to upgrade the ageing servers of the remote Challenger Gold Mine.
Located 740 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, the mine’s only source of communications comes from a satellite connection. All communications and systems are hosted in Challenger’s on-site severs, which were running Windows Server 2003.
Calvert, who appeared in the 2010 CRN Fast 50, moved the entire workload of the 110 staff to a Hyper-V Windows Server 2012. It allows Challenger's operations to continue even if one aspect is down.
Dean Calvert, Calvert's managing director, said the looming end-of-support for Windows Server 2003 wasn’t the only motivation for the upgrade.
“The main server was still physical and we couldn’t get reliable backups,” Calvert said.
“It was becoming more difficult to reboot the server every time. We were concerned the whole system would be completely corrupted.”
Every one of Challenger's online functions is hosted by its servers, but limited communications infrastructure meant the company was unable to regularly update its software.
This was a particular problem with Surpac, a mining tool used to map and select areas to mine in. Surpac updates daily by analysing samples taken by workers on-site.
“The server migration has made everyone’s lives a lot easier," Challenger administration supervisor Robyn Greening said.
"From a personal perspective, I don’t have colleagues constantly coming to me with IT issues anymore which means I can concentrate on other parts of my job."
Challenger had been using the previous server version since 2009. Calvert will continue to provide remote services from its offices in Payneham, South Australia.
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